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Agencies across the executive branch must reassess longstanding practices for addressing employee misconduct following a flurry of regulatory activity by the Office of Personnel Management. OPM’s two recent updates to the federal suitability regulations, little more than a month apart, rewrite the employee misconduct playbook for the over 1.35 million competitive service and career Senior Executive Service members of the federal workforce.OPM’s first rule, published June 30 and already in effect, introduced a new tool for addressing employee misconduct: suitability actions based on post-appointment conduct under 5 CFR 731. These actions allow agencies to tap into OPM’s resources to remove individuals who have engaged in gross misconduct.This is a significant change. Instead of relying solely on the agency’s staff and traditional adverse action procedures under Chapter 75 of Title 5, the law governing most serious disciplinary actions against federal employees, OPM can step in to act.OPM’s second rule, published Aug. 3 and effective Sept. 2, streamlined the appeals process for suitability actions and moved the venue for appeals from the quasi-judicial Merit Systems Protection Board to OPM. The new appeals rule replaces the prior MSPB appeal route with an OPM appeal process.Together, the rules create an alternative path when an individual poses an unacceptable risk to the integrity or efficiency of the federal service that can:
